The main purpose of this Bachelor´s thesis is to investigate the visions chief librarians have for their public libraries. The world around us and our way of living is changing as the society is changing ever more rapidly. This evolvement also influences the public library, its role for society and individuals, its activities and its design. The question is how the public library can face these changes and what function and role it can get and make for itself in the future. Through qualitative interviews with five chief librarians our aim is to answer the main question of this thesis: What are the visions that chief librarians on public libraries have for the public library´s future? This study also contain the role the chief librarians give the public library of today and what they mean is necessary for their visions to be achieved.

This Masters thesis concerns how library and preschool can cooperate in supporting childrens language development and especially that of bilingual children. We have investigated how librarians and preschool teachers different competences can complement each other to gain the best result in work with childrens language development. This study is based on qualitative interviews with four librarians and three preschool teachers. The answers from them have been analysed according to different categories. Our results show that both librarians and preschool teachers think that bilingual children need extra support and that it takes longer to learn two languages.

How do you see on natural science within preschool? Does education and interest play a role for how the educationalist works with natural science? And is the children?s interest for natural science affected by the educationalist, what does the educationalist think himself? These questions have I under my teachers training and under deputyship in preschool asked myself and these questions lies to behalf for my investigation. I interviewed five educationalists on different preschools for my investigation.My investigation resulted in that I have been able to see a certain conjunction between how you work with natural science in preschool and the educationalist education or interest. What also plays a role is that you often associate natural science with knowledge of nature. The educationalist seems overall positive to natural science, but depending of a lack of knowledge it feels strange and difficult.

Citizenship information is defined as the information the citizen needs to be able to take part in and influence the society. Since it is a democratic issue that information concerning the citizens role in society really reaches the citizens, it is of importance to study how the citizens proceed when they have a need for this information. The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate how our eight informers proceed when they experience this need in a non-work situation. We performed qualitative interviews. The most important part of our interviews was the introduction of some fictitious problems to the informants.

The purpose of this master´s thesis was to investigate the role and function of the annual reports of public libraries: for what purpose are they put together and how are they evaluated and utilised. The study presents different views on the structure and content of library annual reports. Focusing on a specific public library and its municipal administration, the authors identify and describe problems and possibilities regarding the library annual reports. The study also provides a general view of their occurrence, their addressees and the importance attached to them.In a review of current literature on accounting and activity reports the authors place the annual reports of public libraries in a wider context. The study also presents two current models of performance measurement - the Intangible Assets Monitor and the Balanced Scorecard - which were developed in the private sector, and the authors discuss their relevance when applied to public libraries.Data were collected both in interviews and by means of a questionnaire.

The point of departure for this thesis was an article written by Christer Hermansson (2008). He thinks that librarians, following the development of Library 2.0 and the change of public libraries, have strayed away from what he believes should be the focus of the library: Literature. The aim of this thesis is to study how librarians in six Swedish libraries perceive their occupational roles. How does the increased user control, which is seen as part of Library 2.0, affect the tasks of libraries and librarians? The material used in this study was acquired using a qualitative interview technique in which six librarians working in public libraries with experience of IT, mediation and purchase of literature partook.

vuxnas läsning av skönlitteratur I became happier and wiser: young adults reading of fiction [123[upps-01.gif This Masters thesis explores young adults 18-26 years old, reading of fiction: their reading preferences, the meaning of reading and their access to literature. A study was made by way of a questionnaire, including 56 young adults, and seven qualitative interviews with two groups: one at a folk highschool and the other at a public library. The theories we have used to analyse the results are: theories of gender and youth, theories of literary genres, reader-response criticism, literature sociology and the theories of cultural sociology by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In the analysis the results are compared to other studies of reading habits. Results from this study show that the young adults read fiction from several genres among popular- and quality literature.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the points of view of three groups of actors about their local learning center and its collaboration with the library. By interviewing groups of actors from the municipal sector, the library staff and students, I aim to investigate their associations of the learning centre, what kind of services it should offer, and how they understand the role of the library staff in specific collaboration between the public library and the adult education administration. The study design is based on Gunnar Grepperud?s and Terje Thomsen?s three missions for a local learning centre; the mission of a broker, a meeting place and a motivator. I also use Carol Kuhlthau?s levels of mediation as an approach to investigate how the actors want the library staff to work in relation to the centre.

The underlying purpose of this study is to see whether a library focused solely on providing literature in other languages than Swedish serves as a unifying, integrating force, or as an agent for division and exclusion. The study focuses on the International Library in Stockholm. The authors have created a profile of the visitors of the selected library, concerning their characteristics, their library habits and their perceptions of the International library. This profile has then been compared with the staff?s perception of the visitors as a group.

The Swedish public library was founded in the years when the society in Sweden went from being a society of agriculture to industrialism. Modernism was sweeping over the country, everything was possible, which influenced the new society that was built. Now Sweden was going to be a true democracy with responsible and empathic citizens. One of the main tools in this process was to educate people, to get them to read and write and the public library fitted very well into these new ideas. It represented a place, free of charge, where everyone could go to take part of the knowledge and cultural learning that they needed in order to become the citizen that the society required.

Principles that guide how a classification system should be structured have existed for more than a century. Traditional classification principles can be of great value for the design of classification schemes directories on the web. However, there are differences between the library context in which these principles originated, and the web. This thesis aims at investigating how changes in the context of classification affect the application of traditional principles of classification on the web. Another purpose is to see what implications this has for the design of classification schemes on the web.

The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to do a benchmarking study of the marketing activities at the public library of Valdemarsvik. The purpose is also to describe and get a deeper understanding of benchmarking as a method for improving library activity. Four major problem areas are addressed: How can one use benchmarking as a tool to achieve change? How can one learn with benchmarking? What similarities and differences are there between benchmarking and other similar methods for competence development? Is benchmarking better than other similar methods for competence development? The empirical approach was qualitative and the method chosen was action research.

The main purpose of this bachelor?s thesis is to examine how Swedish upper secondary school librarians and related staff relate to the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. The research is placed in the all-embracing context of information literacy and source criticism on the Internet. The study was carried out in the form of qualitative interviews and based on two theoretical bases: firstly, the concept of cognitive authority stipulated by Patrick Wilson, and secondly the idea that Wikipedia has a draw towards late modern epistemological assumptions. The latter theory was also associated with the perceptions of knowledge among the library staff interviewed.

The purpose of this study is to find out how libraries can be user-friendly to people with dyslexia by focusing on how adult dyslectics experience the library. Data were collected through literature and interviews with adult dyslectic students. Two different types of user studies served as a theoretical framework; one was an individual-related study by professor Wilson and the other was a system-related one from professor Buckland. The findings in this study shows that dyslectic library users often experience difficulties when seeking for materials in the library, due to the libraries organisation of material according to the written language. Through technical aid and a more user-friendly organisation of materials it may be easier to find relevant material for dyslectics.

This is a thesis about 9-12-year old girls and their leisure reading. The purpose of this study is to examine their reading experiences. The method we use is a combination of qualitative interviews and studies of literature. The thesis shows that there seem to be four basic needs in girls that can be satisfied by leisure reading; the need to develop language skills; the need to be entertained; the need to gain knowledge of the world and the need to get help to resolve personal issues. The interviews with nine girls show that they primarily read for fun and that the knowledge and insights that are conveyed in literature come in second place.